In a breathless display of hypocrisy and hyperbole Jacob Heilbrunn is drumming up the latest attempt by Al Qaeda as all Obama’s fault. The gist of the article is that President Obama did not lose his mind, overreact and scare the American people to death enough after the attempted attack.

Obviously there were big mistakes made to let this man aboard the flight to begin with and from reports most of the blame lies with the State Departments poor screening when issuing him a visa. About the only article that explained how the system really failed is, “The Trouser Bomber Effect: Watching Government Cure Incompetence with Idiocy“. Not surprisingly the monetary influence of the suspects father probably played a part in the State Department’s decision to issue a Visa to the suspected terrorist.

Looking at the big picture I see too big problems in this country that is preventing us from solving our problems. The first is a whole political party that refuses to cooperate and make this country better for political reasons who is supported by enough of the public to aid and abet their obstructionism. The fact that there are dozens of appointments being blocked by the GOP in the Senate truly shows the depths of the GOP’s efforts to hinder progress or even a more competently run government.

The second is the shear volume of problems Bush left this country with in the first place. Even with a good plan to triage all of this country’s problems there are just too many problems to fix in a short amount of time.

FYI: I moved all comments connected to the confusion over the “Request Deletion” function to the Help Desk.

In future, please post all questions about technical issues at the Help Desk so we can respond quickly and not disrupt other threads.

You can find a link to the Help Desk at the top of the far right column (titled, “CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE HELP DESK”), here’s the direct link which you can bookmark to keep handy: http://planetpov.com/2009/12/24/help-desk

BTW, as you know, The Planet is a dynamic site which we update and improve all the time, to make it a better and better place for the membership.

When functions are added or updated, they may appear differently. We will update the membership on major new additions or feature changes but do keep in mind that minor changes will occur from time to time. In this case, we have updated the function that allows you to edit your comments to the newest version. We have also updated WordPress to the newest version which has a few minor changes in appearance here and there.

Was it Will Rogers that said, “The Best Defense we have as a nation is the Atlantic and Pacific”? or something like that.

Europe has dealt with terrorism for years.
Ireland had, and still has the IRA, even though they are more complacent now, but France had the nail bombs in their public trashcans and since that happened, they no longer have those type of receptacles in Paris.

We’ve been lucky, until 9/11 and we’re lucky again since thwarting the shoe-bomber under BushCO, and now the Amsterdam bomber over Detroit.

I lived in Paris, right after 9/11, January of 2002 was when we flew over there to live for 2 years.
They had armed military everywhere on the subways and trains, because the United States being attacked like we were on 9/11, echoed throughout the world.

They set up blocks by schools, and they took so many precautions beyond what they already had in place.

Let me tell you, that riding the trains and subways, and seeing men and women in full military dress with guns, and I mean BIG guns strapped on, was discomfiting, but comforting nonetheless.

While we were in France, there were more terrorist attacks in other areas of the world, such as the subway in Japan, whereby so many were killed and then the relief workers going in, heard all the cellphones ringing from the dead.

We have to accept the threat as real, and we must never be off-guard.
We must be aware.

And we in the US have another problem beyond Europe, where guns are not so easily accessible.

We must worry about our fellow Americans doing drive-by shootings, or like what just happened recently here in the Phoenix area.

A 43 year old woman was shot and killed after shopping at K-Mart, and her killers were caught, but they killed her for a gang initiation.

And two days before Christmas, a 57 year old woman who always jogged in her upper class neighborhood was gunned down, and there are no suspects.

We live in a violent world and a violent gun-loving America, yet we’re not safer.

Interesting perspective! I know the genie is out of the bottle, but I wonder what things would be like if we didn’t have that darned 2nd amendment. (Oh boy! I’ll bet I’m gonna’ get grilled on that comment!)

But Obama and Napolitano are not showing enough emotion and eliciting “FEAR”.
Oh, we all must be afraid, very, very afraid, according to the Republicans.
Instilling FEAR is leadership, dontcha know and you bethcha!

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9 years ago

Member

BigDogMom

Do the Repuglies have a “FEAR” trademarked? That could mean bucco bucks for them…

There is another hp article about the recent terror incident, by John Gambrell, which does not blame Obama. Rather, it asks us to feel sorry for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, telling us how lonely and depressed and confused he has apparently been.

Hello? Millions of people are lonely and depressed and confused; they do not, however, pack explosives into their trousers and set out to blow up 300 people in mid-air.

It seems like WordPress (our hosting service) is doing some upgrading today. Some of the forms are different, the post options are laid out differently. (Or perhaps AdLib is working behind the scenes…)

To escribacat and everyone who has looked into the ‘REQUEST DELETION’ thing on my posts (next to the little red garbage can icon):

Thank you for your efforts. Scheherazade has kindly explained it all to me. I thought someone was requesting that my posts be deleted because they were offensive or something, and I couldn’t understand what was so wrong with what I said about the ‘sad and lonely’ terrorist. I’d never seen ‘REQUEST DELETION’ (or the little red garbage can) before.

Abby, try to hover over it. See if it’s a link. I think I know what you’re talking about. It’s there so that you can request that your post be deleted if you wish. Like say you posted something and had a change of heart about it then you could request it be deleted.

Okay, I’m not into that part of the conspiracy, but both my husband and I agree, had the BushCO listened to the warnings, how simple would it have been to avoid 9/11 by beefing up security at the airports?
Box cutters would have been detected through the metal detectors.

And then again, there are still those who believe Pearl Harbor could have been prevented had they been listening.

Remember when Ashcroft yelled that he didn’t want to hear anything more about al qaida?
Or when Condi Rice asked, Al who?

Yeah, BushCO inherited 9/11 from Clinton, even though the first WTC bombing happened within 4 weeks of Clinton taking office, yet Bush Sr. wasn’t blamed.
And yeah, let’s all ignore that the Clinton Admin found the culprit and that terrorist is still in prison.

How anyone can continue to read HP is beyond me.
If I click on an article and it leads me to HP, I quickly close the browser as I refuse to read that garbage.
As far as I am concerned, HP is a rightwing rag by a rightwing hag.

BTW you brought up a good point about some of the people who I call the “progressive saints”. The people that you mentioned are trusted by some progressives with absolutely no intellectual scrutiny. I like you refuse to deffer my independent thought processes to others just because they are a famous progressive pundit.

Exactly the concern I have. Naomi Klein, Glen Greenwald. David Sarota all are trusted names in the progressive community — and not without reason. I don’t know what’s going on with them. They’re acting like political novices.

And what’s interesting.. Now that Krugman is taking a very balanced view of the administration, he’s losing some credibility among hardline progressives. Whereas before, when he was spending all his ink criticizing Obama’s handling of the economy, he was one of the “saints.”

Great point about Krugman. I noticed he is taking a much more realistic view these days. Unlike the lynch mob he is backing Bernake’s reappointment. Too many people buy into the group think whether it’s conservatives or progressives. Bernake and the Treasury Department are soft targets on the surface but if you drill down to what really occurred Bernake saved us from a Great Depression using the Fed powers the way they were designed and Geithner’s plan to recapitalize the banks using private funds worked.

I think this contrariness has to do with the “inner revolutionary” that many lefties have. It’s too boring to plod through actual progressive legislation so they focus on the faults and cry for revolt.

Tucker Carlson had a show on PBS, and we used to watch it, even though it was difficult.
PBS canceled him, because viewership fell, and on his last show for PBS, he whined about the “liberal” PBS canceling him because ‘liberals’ can’t handle the truth or opposing viewpoints.
This, about PBS that has Charlie Rose and interviews Kissinger regularly among other Republicans and this, about a station that airs “Religion and Ethics”, which by the way, is an excellent show.
Tucker Carlson tries hard, but he’s no Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck.
Heck, he even failed, like DeLay, on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ or whatever show that is on Fox.

We watch PBS from Tempe and ASU.
With the converter box for digital, we get 4 PBS stations, and we love them all, well, the 4th one is all music with desert scenes, but it’s good for mood music.
Do you do free TV with a converter box?
If so, channel 3 here in Phoenix, just added ‘THIS’ TV and it’s all movies, most old, but some fairly new.

I’m supposed to be working, but I have to add my 2 cents.
I saw this article, that for some reason, disturbed me more than all else I’d seen over at HP. I read it on the 24th, the day they posted it, and it was already closed for comments, which I found strange.
It is utterly shameless Obama Bashing at it’s high point.
Fox would be proud!!
How to combat this ceaseless attack of rethoric in the upcoming election cycle is my biggest concern.
We need a plan or these folks will tire us out. ?????http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/what-if-president-obama-s_b_402955.html

I notice comments are closed for that piece of nonsense. He must have been getting pilloried.

Step by step, HP is increasing the right wing voice on the site. I’m expecting the progressive pretense to be thrown aside entirely within the next two years. Too bad for Tucker Carlson. He thought he’d found a new niche.

Nellie, I have an idea for the AH “project” you mentioned last week. I think it was Tiger who posted the link to the AH column archives. I skimmed through some of them and thought it was be interesting to do a more thorough job of that and track her trajectory over a period of years, based on her own writings. It would take some time but could be very revealing.

“”Wayne Simmons, a former CIA agent and member of the military analysts program, which the New York Times outed in 2008 as a Pentagon propaganda effort, told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade that terrorists are “emboldened” to attack the United States and its allies because “they recognize … that there will be no repercussions from the Obama administration.”””

Some on the RW are calling for racial, religious and name profiling.
With a billion followers of Islam, that should do it! What are they going to do ask everyone what their religion is before one can fly? Oh, that will be foolproof. I would never lie on that form. If I had a criminal mind I wold never use a forged passport with a different name and country of origin.
Perhaps, they could just ask everyone that flys: “are you going to commit suicide? Are you going to blow up or hijack this plane? Are you going to commit mass murder? Did someone else pack your suitcase?”
That should do it. NO ONE would lie about that, would they?

B’ito!!!
Your name here does sound a bit’o foreign.
Sheriff Joe could take over the TSA, since he’s a master at profiling.
And the truly scary thing about that, is that some have already suggested that Sheriff Joe be in charge.

One point I thought was interesting…Congressman Alan Grayson was interviewed a couple of weeks ago on MSNBC. He stated that there were over 100 bills sitting in the Senate that had been passed by the House but not taken up in the Senate. The Senate is not doing its job! The republicans somehow seem to be able to hold up everything. It’s total gridlock! What is it with these guys?? 🙁

That is the truth. The rules are utterly undemocratic. I’m surprised no one ever challenged the constitutionality of the filibuster rule. Now the Constitution does say the Senate can make up it’s own rules but it also says to pass laws it takes a minimum of 50 senators AND the VP to pass legislation. It sounds like a constitutional question that should be answered because there is a de facto case go be made that the Senators are using the Senate filibuster rule to circumvent the intent of majority rule in the Constitution.

That would be a struggle, a major one. Because that was the ethos on which the Senate was founded – that all of the states are of equal standing, and the Senate make-up reflects that.

I need convincing of that, because I still don’t agree that California or New York should be judged to be more important than Rhode Island or even Oklahoma. It’s just unfortunate, in terms of seniority, now that the Dems have the Senate, that so many of these ranking Senators come from sparsely populated states.

I think you have a point on equal representation of the states, Marion. I was reading some de Tocqueville this past summer and he made some interesting points on the wisdom and necessity of preventing tyranny of the majority (as well as of the minority). Equal representation seems to help with that problem.

Agree, though, also that the filibuster needs to be seriously reworked. It’s a massively warped version of what it was meant to be.

I have to question how the senate represents the country. States are on equal footing for what reason? Isn’t that just a holdover from a time when slavery states needed protection? That question has never been answered for me.

Another note on Republicans have they forgotten that Richard Reid too made it on to an aircraft with bomb materials in his shoe? The passengers and crew were also credited with helping to foil his attempt. This, at a time when Marshalls were supposed to be flying incognito on flights.

Funny, i almost put lines between the letters bomb LOL some habits are hard to break

Let’s face it, we have a conservative(for the most part) run MSM. I have seen CNN as of late, respond a little more honestly for both sides, but the Republicans give good theater. They are angry, obstinate and can make up the best excuses in the world for their actions, and no one questions them except for Keith, Rachel and now Suzanne Malvaeu. IMHO she should replace Wolf Blitzer. He has not been effective since the first gulf war. An example of their rhetoric, Orin Hatch responded to the AP yesterday about the Medicare Part D bill,
Six years ago, “it was standard practice not to pay for things,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. “We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question.” His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit “has done a lot of good.”

The day I gave up on CNN was on a Sunday show with John King. He was interviewing Peter Orszag about the economy. His question was, “Is President Obama so timid that he’s afraid to get his hands dirty?”

John King is a pimp {{{{disgust}}}}}}}. I am choosy about what I watch over there, Suzanne has proven so far to be fair, Rick Sanchez, Amanpour, Fareed and Tony(in the morning) is all I normally watch. The rest are pimps.

Max Blumenthal has a very interesting column over yonder on the topic of Obama Disappointment. I’m not sure I agree with him but the topic is fascinating. The gist of it is that many people were almost in a religious fervor over Obama that mirrored the right-wing evangelical zealotry. One good quote:

“At a rally in South Carolina, Oprah Winfrey referred to Obama as “The One,” a fusion of Jesus and Neo from The Matrix.”

I can’t say I was in a religious ferver, but I was certainly smitten with the guy and the miracle of his election. Yet, I must have had realistic expectations because I’m not experiencing the deep anger and disappointment that many others express now.

(Blumenthal also claims that Obama flirted briefly with membership in the Republican Party, which was news to me.)

Blumenthal says it’s these former Obama zealots who are now attacking him for disappointing them so deeply.

But who are these disgruntled progressives? Is it really the crushed zealots or is it people who never really quite supported him? Is it PUMAs? I think most of the Obama-bashers over yonder are actually Pumas and Nader/Kuchinich supporters. Why are some of us still with the president and some of us have turned on him? What are the psychological differences in our make-up?

I think Chris Matthews had them pegged a couple of weeks ago, saying he wasn’t even sure they were Democrats. They’re obviously very young – possibly first-time voters or people who’ve never voted before or for a long time. One woman on HP ripped me a new one, saying she voted for Obama and that was the first time in 20 years she’d voted.

I do think they bought into the rock star image and patently didn’t bother to listen to him at all, just gazed at the image. I watched clips of his Convention speech here in the UK with colleagues from work who were totally amazed at the looks of blithe adoration from some of the crowd.

These are the selfsame people who are saying Obama promised not to go into Afghanistan (he did; it was the “good” war), that he was for single-payer (he wasn’t) and that he promised everyone a job with a 6-figure salary and a house with a swimming pool. In other words, they projected their own political fantasies onto him; and now they’re disappointed because he’s being a politician, a pragmatist and governing from the centre … as you do.

Jane Hampshire at Firedog Lake is a great example, But we also have writers like Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, and David Sarota leading a progressive drumbeat of dissent. If you check in with AlterNet, it’s all Obama bashing all the time.

Klein’s another fame whore who’s tripping on her own self-importance. In fact, she’s flaming arrogant. Here’s a link from a Guardian op-ed, the writer of which is American. It just reeks of her arrogance and ignorance:-

BTW, she’s Canadian. Sorry, but you don’t come into another person’s country and start dissing the government, especially when you’ve made a vast amount of money off America. As far as I’m concerned, Naomi Effing Klein can just b*gger on back to Canada and comment on Stephen Harper’s perceived ineffectuality.

LOL, Hillary is as much a hawk as McCain in some areas. I did support her initially but when I took the time to really compare platforms, Obama won out. I give her and Bill credit for coming over, but I know there was a motive there. I really really liked Bill Clinton but some of the issues he has been embroiled in have taken off a lot of that lustre

Anybody who has been following my comments for the last few years knows that I have very little regard for either of the Clintons.

I think that the two of them did substantial harm to my party. Bill especially.

Why he could not control his zipper is beyond me. Why could he not make an accommodation with some 40 year old Georgetown Socialite? Somebody prepared to be discrete, and who, if her relationship came out, would not cause people to think “uhg! Cradle robber!!!”?

I think your analysis is much more intelligent and correct than Blumenthal’s analysis.

Expectations by most people was always too high for Obama but the whole hero worship thing was vastly overstated.

I’ve seen more distrust in Obama by his supporters from the election on many of his supporters think they know better than Bush ever experienced. By our very nature meaning what defines us as progressives and liberals just makes more distrustful in our leaders.

Thanks so much, e’cat. As usual, Bloomenthal is comprehensive and insightful. The essay is also on Blumenthal’s site here.

What I especially like about this piece — Max is a genius, I’m convinced — is that he calls out the Big Names who contributed to the distortion of Mr. Obama’s platform, which ultimately led to the misguided expectations of the progressive community. Those of us who actually listened to the man knew he was no progressive. And we voted for him expecting bipartisan efforts, constitutional review of everything, and a centrist governing style. Which is exactly what we got.

If anything, Mr. Obama has been more progressive than I expected him to be.

The best way I can describe Obama’s political philosophy in one sentence is that he has a progressive vision but is pragmatic in practice and above all he does not have a radical partisan personality. He would rather work using compromise than jam his agenda down people’s throats.

His three pillars for putting this country back on track including; healthcare reform, energy independent and education reform is the most progressive vision a president has had for this country since LBJ.

The problem is the GOP and conservatives in his own party want to block progress in all three areas for selfish political reasons.

Cheers. Everyone would know this about President Obama is they had just done their homework on him.

My biggest disappointment is that Obama has not been about to make a dent in the hyper partisanship in this country. I know it’s because the GOP just refuses to put “Country First” but it’s still one of the few promises Obama has not delivered on in any way.